The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1887-03-05
WELDING COPPER.
The Important Discovery Made bya Penn
sylvania Blacksmith.

The Important Discovery Made bya Penn
sylvania Blacksmith.
After years of patient experimenting
James Burns, blacksmith at the Ale
gheny Valley railroad shops i'll Verona,
has made wonderful discovery. He
has found the process in the unsuccess-
full search of which millions of dollars
have been spent by scientists during
We past one hundred years. This is the
w ding of copper. Until now copper
never could be welded. Every known
art, method and science was tried on it,
but all failed. Even electricity was I'M
able to doit. This insurmountable OBJ
stacle made copper a very expensive
metal to handle, and yet it is the only
metal that will do for q large part of
machinery. In making copper steam
pipes for engines and locomotives they
had to be worked up out of the solid
raw mass of copper by sort of boring
process which was tedious and costly
To make copper ring for fitting over
a joint in pipes or cylinders, it had to
be cut round out of square piece Of
solid plate copper. This caused waste
and the consumer was charged for the
whole square. The waste could often
not be melted over into another plate,
because by the present smeltingmeth
the slightest impurity mixing in it will
spoil the whole mass. Torepair broken
or defective copper pipes, chambers or
vessels, brass had to be used, by which
in whole days labor the piece could
be brazed. But should an intense heat
ever strike the brazed part afterward,
the brass would melt and thus the piece
be ruined.
With little vial of chemicals (the
combination and names of which are
Mr.. Burns secreO, a hot fire, an anvil
and a hammer, the Verona blacksmith
shows how in ten minutes he can do all
that overcomes the above difficulties.
He has already welded nearly dozen
different articles in copper with as
much ease as baser metals can be ham
died, and submitted them to eXamina-
ton. While showing the result of his
experiments to the reporter, Mr.. Burns
offered to go to the Office stove and
weld a bit of copper, using a tack ham
mer. Wherever he can get a fire and
hammer he can weld copper. BY the
old process of brazing, fourteen or fiji
teen heats in u furnace are required to
fix copper, but by his welding process
only one heat is necessary. The weld
being the pounding Of the pure copper
together. makes it so strong that it
will never give out like brazed parts.
By this new discovery straight piece
of copper can be curved into a circle and
then welded together in a ring for fit
ting over joints, thus saving the waste
of cutting it from square plate. Pipes
may be made in the same way, being
welded instead of worked out of the
copper boiler for small engine by his
welding-something unheard of. In the
process of welding the copperis purified,
another remarkable feature Of the dis
COfCl ~ NO inquiry lIHAIiS III Oiic
smelter interferes and old scraps have
been remelted and welded into all sorts
of pipes, joints and fittings by Mr..
Burns. Old copper was recently selling
at twelve cents u pound, while the
market price of copper on heat was
thirty-eight cents.
A paper recently read by Prof. f.
Thompson before the Society of Arts at
Boston mentioned that the new art of
electric welding applied to copper. Mr..
Burns says that is not welding because
it is not hammered. 1t is simply burn
ing two ends together, and were ham,
mer applied to it all would be ruined.
He therefore says it is impracticable.
Mr.. Burns has spent considerable money
in the eight or nine years he has been
iarePParng his secret chemical mixture.
Pittsburgh Commercial gazette.